hello,so heres the story: I just got an O2, which had linux loaded on it. I wanted to change to irix, so I set about formatting the hard drive. so i did the normal format, using the sashARCS and stand/fx.ARCS commands to bring up the formatter, formatted completely. now, Ive tried irix 6.5.1 and 6.5.15, each time, ill load the CD, it will "install installation tools", then when the bar gets to 100%, the screen goes black and goes into energy saver mode, and the power button and such fail to respond, requiring me to unplug it. my printenv seems clean, what else could it be?

Last edited by compuman86 on Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yep, first try Dexter's nvram resetenv advice, as it is very quick and easy to do, and it will either work or not, no harm done if it doesn't. After doing that, run hinv in the prom, and make sure that the boot variables match the actual hardware in the machine, i.e. that the disk IDs match the location of the boot disk listed in nvram.

If resetting the nvram environment variables doesn't work, then double check the disk partitioning and volume header information. For example, you'll want to have sgilabel and the appropriate version of sash in the volume header.

ok, well that didnt work. each time i try to reinstall, the bar goes up to 100, the mouse freezes, then the screen goes black and the monitor goes out. im gonna try removing the sound/video inpu card and see if that is the failure

well, finally solved. I spent the better half of the day swapping parts between two O2 boards, with trial, error, and success. my problem and solution go as follows:1. the board in o2 x was a 1997 board with what I found to be a 300mhz "2000 sgi" processor2.the board in o2 y was a 1997 board and 200mhz "1997 cube-bug" processorboth had 4.14 PROM versions

so I switched processor y into board x, installed 6.5, upgraded overlay to 6.5.22, which upgraded the PROM to 4.18. upon swapping the x processor back into the x board, it all works!

so as it seems, PROM version seems to dictate what processor version works in what board...

compuman86 wrote:well, finally solved. I spent the better half of the day swapping parts between two O2 boards, with trial, error, and success. my problem and solution go as follows:1. the board in o2 x was a 1997 board with what I found to be a 300mhz "2000 sgi" processor2.the board in o2 y was a 1997 board and 200mhz "1997 cube-bug" processorboth had 4.14 PROM versions

so I switched processor y into board x, installed 6.5, upgraded overlay to 6.5.22, which upgraded the PROM to 4.18. upon swapping the x processor back into the x board, it all works!

so as it seems, PROM version seems to dictate what processor version works in what board...

I'm pretty sure this is the reason why SGI emphasized the importance of updating IRIX to 6.5.4 or higher before doing certain CPU upgrades, and you're right, it probably should work it's way into the wiki somehow.